[ltp] Re: skinny fonts

[Daniel Pittman]

Greg Meyer <mdklists@gkmweb.com> writes:
> On Saturday 11 March 2006 1:47 am, Bret Comstock Waldow wrote:
>> It's not your hardware.  1400x1050 means more definition, and better
>> looking fonts, than 1024x768.
>
> Excellent point to cap off an outstanding explanation.  A 1400x1050
> display that is the same size as a 1024x768 display will have much
> nicer font rendering assuming the X is told about the correct display
> size, because it has more pixels per inch to make a better image.
>
> Back to the OP, because you were focused on recreating what windows
> was doing, with a graphical environment that doesn't do it the way
> windows does, you have inadvertently traded in a much nicer display.
> Just set DisplaySize to the actual physical characteristics of the
> flat panel, and all will be fantastic.

Just a quick note: what y'all are saying here is true in most cases, and
is definitely true with the GNOME and KDE desktops that most people use
these days.

If you run X applications that continue to use core fonts, the higher
resolution is much less use -- basically, because there are very few
high quality core fonts once you move away from a 75DPI display.[1]

So, in most cases and with most users a higher resolution display
configured correctly, as you suggest, will improve things.  


One of the more common applications with this problem is Emacs and
XEmacs, both of which support Xft and client side font rendering only in
fairly experimental branches.  Another is the traditional xterm, which
will use core fonts by default.[2]

	Daniel

Footnotes: 
[1]  Basically, because core fonts can only render single bit bitmap
     text they can have nasty problems rendering fine curves where the
     relation of pixel to point size differs from the relation they were
     designed for/at.

[2]  All of these applications suffer worse because the range of high
     quality monospace core fonts available is much smaller than the
     range of high quality core fonts. 

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